That's just about the most accurate band name I've ever heard, truly it is. Waterdown is watered down. All of today's currently popular and marketable forms of 'punk rock' are crammed together into one big foul burger. I say burger because that's what it is, Waterdown sounds like a McDonalds hamburger: there's some ketchup (metal), some mustard (emo), some pickles (hardcore), lettuce (80s hairmetal), maybe a little secret sauce (aka salad dressing, big secret guys) and perhaps even a sesame seed bun (pop-punk). It's all thrown efficiently together on an assembly line for the utmost profitability. Only it tastes like hell, the meat is barely recognizable and the whole thing gives you a stomach ache 15 minutes later and sends you rushing for the bathroom. When you just cram a bunch of stuff together what you get isn't necessarily the sum of its parts, sometimes it's a lot worse. Take for example McDonalds recent experimentation with its 'new tastes menu': McBratwurst, McPhilly Cheese Steak, steak and egg McMuffin, Cuban McSandwich, and now McWaterdown. And lately Victory has been acting very much like a musical fast food joint, positioning themselves for the market of kids who are looking for something harder edged or more legitimate than the 'punk' they're seeing on MTV. It's the kids who liked Good Charlotte until a couple months ago when they decided that being on TRL, "Just isn't what punk is all about, duder." Well punk's not about anything at all, dipshit. It's an amorphous concept without any real meaning anymore. It's a long-dead musical genre who's corpse continues to sing and dance. Same with hardcore.
Victory's last few releases have all been in the vein of the hyper-slicked up pop masquerading as punk that the kids are so into these days, only a little bit tougher cause it's got some screaming or something. This is hardly better than the band's all over the air-waves these days, it's as slick and sickly accessible as anything on the radio. Only with some screaming and the occasional breakdown. Take "Bulletproof" for instance, which suddenly and awkwardly transitions from a monster-voice and 80s type solo to a three-part harmony and high-pitched pop vocals. Or "Decaffeinated" which uses the old emo trick of taking smooth, slow vocals and putting them over really fast, rocking music. Cause the Get Up Kids didn't exhaust that style with the Woodson EP in 1997 or anything. But I guess Waterdown puts their own spin on it by having an horrifically embarrassingly off-key falsetto in the chorus. Most of the song's are basically genre-exercises, doing nothing really new except cramming those bits together with bits of other worn and tired genres. "Nothing" has the phlegm-riddled street-punk vocals and chorus of overused gang vocals that you would expect from Rancid or Jersey or something. Playing several predictable and generic genres and fucking gluing them all together does not count as 'innovative' and 'unique' in my book, I'm sorry. About the only part of the album I did enjoy was the final track "13," a soft instrumental that reminded me of certain parts of the last Sonic Youth album, Murray Street, as pretty little guitar melodies are placed against droning, whining feedback. But that's two minutes out of 46.
But I'm sure Victory will make quite a bit of money selling this to kids at the mall looking for some 'real punk.' Then they can look down on all the kids who liked the shit they were into last year, even though it's all the same damn thing. It's like dissing Burger King when you eat at fucking McDonalds. Or hating Pepsi-drinkers cause you like Coke. It's all just variations on the same fucking product, and let's be clear: most of the music claiming to be 'punk' or 'underground' or 'independent' these days is a product. It's not music and it's not art, it's simply a product.
-exadore
5/18/03 |
